Movie Review: Good Guys Wear Black (1978)

Genre: Action  

Director: Ted Post  

Starring: Chuck Norris, Anne Archer, Dana Andrews, James Franciscus  

Running Time: 96 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1973, Senator Conrad Morgan (James Franciscus) is leading negotiations to end the Vietnam War. A CIA special forces unit known as the Black Tigers, led by Major John T. Booker (Chuck Norris), is ambushed while on a covert mission to rescue American prisoners in the Vietnam jungle. Five years later in Los Angeles, Booker is approached by the mysterious Margaret (Anne Archer), who is asking questions about the botched mission. Booker learns that other Tiger veterans are being murdered, and uncovers a conspiracy.

What Works Well: This lower-budget effort provides Chuck Norris with a career boost away from pure martial arts movies (although he does chop his way through a few action scenes). The plot has decent ambitions to combine mistrust of government agendas with regular bursts of action, and director Ted Post occasionally threatens to breach not-bad levels. Dan Andrews enlivens a couple of scenes with seen-it-all cynicism.

What Does Not Work As Well: The sequence in the Vietnam jungle is too dark to discern what is going on. All the characters lack depth, and despite a decent cast, the acting is strictly monotonal. Norris displays a remarkable inability to display any emotion, and so making love to Margaret or reacting to the death of colleagues all come and go with the same cold detachment. Loose ends and logic gaps prevail, and in the jumbled rush to find an ending, plenty of conspiracy specifics go missing in action.

Key Quote:

John Booker (realizing the mission is compromised): Everything went wrong by the numbers. And that takes planning.

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